Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Clay
I’d forgotten what silence sounded like.
It had been three days since we had fled the castle, using the underground tunnels to make our way back to Hyrax Manor.
We’d arrived in the dead of night, to the sounds of the injured and dying.
Groans, screams and cries that seemed never-ending.
A symphony of agony. It was the first thing I heard in the morning and the lullaby that played as sleep found me each night.
Three whole days of listening to the sounds of my people suffering as my Dragon roared in protest.
It was unbearable.
A knock at the door echoed, and my command to enter was almost unintelligible through my dry throat. It had been ages since I’d taken a break to eat or drink something. I forced my throat to clear and repeated myself, “Come in.”
Elaina pushed her way inside, a plate of boiled potatoes in her hands. She glanced down at it with an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry to say that this is all I can offer you right now. We’re running low on food supplies.”
My head dropped into my hand, and I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, the calluses hard against my flesh. That was yet another problem to add to the growing list. I looked around for some parchment to jot it down, but...
The room was a mess. I’d spent most of my time since the battle in the bedroom Thea had claimed as her own.
But in the chaos of the past few days, the space had become littered with maps, discarded clothes, emptied plates and dishes, and various weapons.
Even the quilt on the bed I forced myself to lie on each night was halfway onto the floor.
Tidying up would also need to be added to the list of priorities.
“I don’t need it,” I said over my shoulder, continuing to look for my list. “Offer it to someone who does.”
She grasped my shoulder, turning me forward to meet her frown head-on. Wordlessly, she shoved the plate towards me.
I couldn’t help but notice the way her shoulders hunched as she did.
She looked exhausted. A low bun held her hair at the nape of her neck, but tangled tendrils were escaping at odd angles. She wore an apron over her dress, and dark splotches of dried blood seemed to stain every part of her. The circles under her eyes were as dark as my mood.
“How are you doing?” I asked her, forcing some gentleness into my tone as I took the plate and set it aside.
She shrugged with a sigh before rolling out her neck and pulsing her fingers against a knot on her left shoulder. “Most are on the mend now.”
I raised a brow at her. That wasn’t the answer to the question I had asked.
When we returned to Hyrax Manor, we found it already crowded with many who had fled the battle. Elaina had taken charge of the masses, tending to the injured while giving orders to the rest. She’d stepped so naturally into the role that no one had ever questioned her authority.
“There’s enough to worry about, Clay,” she reminded me. “Don’t add me to that growing list in your head.”
She’d always been like that—so self-sacrificing. Elaina was always willing to prioritize others above herself. It was a rare quality among rulers.
“You would have made an excellent queen,” I told her softly.
She wouldn’t be a queen now.
Not when I no longer had a kingdom to offer any future bride.
She inhaled deeply before reaching out for my hand to offer a gentle squeeze. “We’re going to get through this.”
Empty words.
Not a promise. It wasn’t a promise she could make, after all. It wasn’t even a promise I could make.
We were facing a God. The last time Hyrax walked the Mortal Realm, it had taken the other Gods fighting with both the Mortals and Descendants to defeat him.
I hoped we would get through this—I really did—I just wasn’t positive we would.
Still, I returned her soft smile before pushing out from behind the desk. My hips ached as I stood, cramped from spending too many hours crouching over the mahogany tabletop staring at the worn, ink-stained map and scheming.
“How’s Kent?” I asked Elaina, coming around the table.
“Conscious,” she replied as she followed me out of the tiny room that I’d been locking myself away in. “So better.”
We entered the living space of the manor, which they had converted into a makeshift infirmary. Blankets covered the floor—patients in various stages of consciousness atop them.
Kent rested at the far end of the room, closest to the hearth. He was shirtless, gauze wrapped around an alarmingly large portion of his chest, but he was, in fact, awake, which was a relief. He met my gaze and bowed his head in acknowledgment.
“And Camilla?” I asked Elaina over my shoulder.
The woman was bent over a young man who had lost his leg during the fight. Sweat pebbled across his wrinkled brow. She dabbed a damp rag against his neck, and a muscle in my jaw twitched unhappily. That rag would do him no good now.
That boy would not live through the night.
Even I learned to recognize the signs of infection during the Great War.
“She’s helping, Clay. She’s been awake just about as long as you have, and she hasn’t complained once.”
There was a sharpness in her tone I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard from her before. I turned to her with a lifted brow, but she had already shifted away, moving to comfort someone who was losing their breakfast in the waste bin.
Gods.
The smell in here left my nostrils burning.
I had almost forgotten how insidious war was, how it consumed all of your senses. Even when the battle had ended, it was still all you could hear and smell. It was all you could think about.
And this war had only just begun.
“Clay.” Iris stood at the main door to the manor in her natural form, dark skin and smoothed-back hair. She still wore those tight-fitting black clothes she preferred for fighting—a blade strapped to her left thigh. “We need to make a plan.”
Her eyes flickered to Camilla briefly, hatred burning in them as she looked at the woman who had once been her friend.
A part of my heart twinged as I took in the rage in that expression.
Camilla had once been… special to me. A friend mostly, but occasionally more than that. Yes, what she did was unforgivable on many accounts, but Thea was insistent that Camilla had been a victim, and I had to trust that Thea understood the power of Gods more than the rest of us.
So, I was working to offer Camilla compassion.
Iris wasn’t.
Iris would never be friends with Camilla again.
I was a little worried she would never be friends with Thea again either. I suspected she wouldn’t ever forgive my Goddess for setting Camilla free.
My cousin cleared her throat and looked away even as her voice carried to both Elaina and Camilla. “You two should come too.”
Camilla’s dark eyes widened, but she didn’t protest. Elaina reached down a hand to help her to her feet, and the two followed us silently into the dining room.
Rankor was already waiting for us, hands on his hips as he stared down at the map on the table, this one larger and more elaborate than the one I’d grown accustomed to inspecting.
A shadow lined his jaw, and he scratched at it absently as Camilla closed the door behind us.
I watched his gaze fall over her, but whatever he thought about her presence he kept to himself.
“I think we’ve taken more than enough time to lick our wounds,” Iris said emotionlessly, crossing her arms over her chest.
I hadn’t seen her much in the three days we’d been at the Manor. Actually, I hadn’t seen any of them. I’d needed to be alone to force the beast inside me to remain dormant instead of flying back to the castle and tearing it apart until Thea was safe.
But now Iris was right; we were running out of time.
“We can’t stay here,” Rankor told me, voicing the concern that had already been spinning in my mind.
The fact that we needed to leave this place was obvious.
Hyrax was in the Mortal Realm.
He had taken over my castle.
And we were sitting inside the manor belonging to his bloodline.
We needed to leave, and we needed to leave soon. But where else was there for us to go?
Iris climbed atop the large wooden table, crossing her legs beneath her and pointing toward the map with the dagger in her hand. “Clanis Province is mostly farmland. It would give us space to spread out, regroup, rebuild the forces.”
“We don’t have any forces,” Rankor reminded her gruffly, running a hand through his hair. “Hyrax and Thea took them.”
Fire burned through me.
“Not Thea.” There was a promise of violence in my tone.
A hush fell over our group, anxious glances exchanged among my friends as I crossed my arms firmly over my chest, unwilling to entertain any debate on the subject.
“I’m sorry.” Iris’ eyes narrowed. “Did you forget the part when she married our enemy?”
No, I most certainly had not forgotten that.
Watching the woman I loved become permanently tied to a man who had done nothing but lie and manipulate her—just so she could save my life—was not something I was going to forget anytime soon.
Thea was not our enemy, though, regardless of who her father or husband was.
“She had no choice,” I reminded them sharply, letting the weight of my gaze fall on each of my friends. “We have all made sacrifices, and she is no exception. You don’t get to forget the woman she is just because she isn’t here with us now.”
Iris pushed her tongue behind her cheek as if she wanted to say more, and I forced a deep breath into my lungs to calm the budding need to shift.
I desperately needed to fly.
Flying was one of the few times I could think clearly—when the force of my magic wasn’t overwhelming.
“Not Clanis,” I announced, returning the conversation to our plan once I had calmed enough that the darkness in my fingertips had receded. “It’s too far. We need to be close enough to the castle to launch another attack when we’re ready.”
The very second that we were capable of it, I wanted that castle back under my control.
And Thea back by my side.
“We still face the issue of not having anywhere near enough forces,” Rankor reiterated.
“Then we get more forces,” I growled. “We do whatever it takes to get her out.”
“How, Clay?” Iris was off the table and on her feet in an instant, standing in front of me without fear. “How do you propose we get enough people to join a fight against a God for us to launch another attack?”
She stepped closer, too close for me to think clearly.
I didn’t know.
That was the simple fucking answer.
I didn’t know how to raise another army right now.
I didn’t know how to successfully fight back against Hyrax.
I didn’t know how to get Thea out of the castle I once locked her in.
“I don’t think another attack should be our priority right now,” Rankor warned.
Perhaps I’d been mistaken in thinking that Rankor and Thea had developed a deeper friendship than the others realized. Clearly, he didn’t care for her as much as I thought he did if he was so willing to leave her in enemy hands.
“Thea is the only priority.”
Iris slammed her palm onto the table, the sound of the slap so sharp that Elaina flinched.
“You’re thinking like a heartsick boy and not a king,” she hissed at me.
“If you want us to trust Thea, then you need to do the same! You need to trust that she can manage Hyrax on her own for now while you start being the leader we need. And if you won’t do that for your people, then do it for her because we both know Thea would expect you to be a king right now. A damn good one at that.”
There was a second heavy thud as she slammed the tip of her blade onto the table, slicing through the map easily. The force made the dagger shake, but she kept her eyes locked on mine, unflinching.
It struck me then how different she was now from how we had been as kids.
Now, I felt like I didn't know my cousin very well at all anymore.
When Iris had left to join the Order, she had changed and come back as something much darker. At first, she had put on a good show of being the happy girl she used to be.
After Lorelai died though, she stopped bothering to hide all that darkness.
“Eagirton.”
Camilla’s voice was nothing more than a timid squeak as she looked at the spot on the map where Iris’ dagger now sat.
The room turned to her, and for a moment, she was oblivious to our attention.
It was the first time in what felt like an eternity that I heard silence. My ears felt hollow without anyone talking or screaming or crying.
Until Camilla abruptly snapped into alertness and shook her dark hair off her shoulders.
“Eagirton.” She pointed to the map. “We can go back to Eagirton. He has plenty of space.”
I frowned, remembering our meeting with Nikolai a few days prior.
We had met with the infamous leader of the nation’s largest crime ring, hoping he might have The Book of the Gods, but Pasnia already had it in her possession.
Elaina tilted her head in agreement. “He has somewhat of an army in his own right.”
He had an army of thieves and murderers.
The last person I wanted to be relying on was Nikolai Legum.
Camilla looked to me, imploring me with her eyes to see the logic in her suggestion. And, Gods help me, I did. As much as I hated the thought of having to ask a man like Nikolai for help, Iris was right. I needed to think like a king.
And kings knew when to make alliances.
“Very well,” I agreed. “We’ll go to Eagirton first.”
“First?” Rankor asked.
I nodded, pulling the blade out of the wood of the table and extending it to my cousin. She looked at it with suspicious, narrowed eyes. Wordlessly, she grasped the blade, not even flinching as it pierced the skin of her palm.
“Eagirton first,” I repeated, watching tiny droplets of blood fall from Iris’ fingertips. “We provide the women and children with shelter there. Then, we rally our allies and build an army.”